The New York Times today has an interesting article about how Japanese nuclear plant regulators only a month before the quake extended the operating license for the destroyed Unit 1 reactor at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Station, despite repeated safety warnings and utility lying. But the US system is subject to the same types of corruption.

The FCC allowing AT&T and friends to write the new rules for Internet access recalls what happened when California handed the pen to Enron and friends in writing rules for electricity markets. Deja vu all over again

The rules that are supposed to protect the health and safety of oil rig workers were designed 15 years ago by the American Petroleum Institute – the industry and lobbying group for major oil and gas companies. The worst part? Even those regulations are considered “voluntary.”

OSHA’s director claims the workers trying to clean up BP’s oilpocalypse don’t need breathing protection. Hey, at least OSHA’s consistent. OSHA pretended the 9/11 rescue and clean up workers didn’t need respiratory protection. We all know how well that worked out. Now that EPA OK’d dumping a million gallons of incredibly toxic dispersant into the Gulf, NMS OK’d the catastrophically negligent and incompetent drilling/clean-up permits, and the Coast Guard’s OK’d their owner BP’s orders to detain and repel media from BP’s crime scene, why should we expect OSHA to do any better? As with all the other Executive Branch “regulatory” agencies, the corporatist servants revolving through the Oval Office long ago perverted the agency’s mission from one of public protection into one of permitting pollution.